Painscapes Communicating Pain

This book brings into dialogue approaches from anthropology, sociology, visual art, theatre, and literature to question what kinds of relations, frames and politics constitute pain across disciplines and methodologies. Each chapter offers a unique window onto the notoriously difficult problem of how pain is defined and communicated. The contributors reimagine the value of images and photography, poetry, history, drama, stories and interviews, not as ‘better’ representations of the pain experience, but as devices to navigate the complexity of pain across different physical, social, and intersubjective domains. 

This innovative collection provides a new access point to the phenomenon of pain and the materialities, affects, structures and institutions that constitute it. This book will appeal to readers seeking to better understand pain’s complexity and the social and affective ecologies through which pain is known, communicated and lived.

1. Painscapes – EJ Gonzalez-Polledo.- 2. 'The sad language of pain': S. Weir Mitchell, the American Civil War, and interpreting physical suffering – Lucy Bending.- 3. An Essay on the Space Outside Pain where the Poem Takes Place – Jude Rosen.- 4. Act like it hurts: questions of role and authenticity in the communication of chronic pain – Sarah Goldingay.- 5. Articulating Pain. Writing the Autoimmune Self – Alice Andrews.- 6. Exhibiting pain, death and grief: from the art gallery to the image shared online—Montse Morcate.- 7. Pain and the Internet: Transforming the experience? - Nikki Newhouse, Helen Atherton, Sue Ziebland.- 8. Photography and mental illness: Feeding or combating the stigma of invisible pain online and offline – Rebeca Pardo.- 9. ADJOIN– Trish O’Shea, Mark Wilkinson and Jackie Jones.- 10. Face2face: sharing the photograph within medical pain encounters; a means of democratization – D

EJ Gonzalez-Polledo is Lecturer in the department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.

Jen Tarr is Assistant Professor of Research Methodology in the Department of Methodology at the LSE, UK.